


Better Days

by CmonCmon



Series: Raising Warriors [20]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Dex's Diner (Star Wars), F/M, M/M, Oye Vode Day, Rancor Feels, Soft Wars, Star Wars AU - Soft Wars, Vode Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26708041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CmonCmon/pseuds/CmonCmon
Summary: Colt and Cody have dinner and a talk.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Colt (Star Wars)/Shaak Ti
Series: Raising Warriors [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835518
Comments: 24
Kudos: 261
Collections: Open Source Soft Wars





	Better Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/gifts), [Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/gifts).



> This one leans on some details of Project0506's [Soft Wars](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775) canon, and might not make sense without it -- so you should read that!
> 
> The usual *giant* thank yous to [PrimaryBufferPanel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/works) and Jac (with the secret AO3)

Colt had attended meetings on ships and in battlefield tents and huddled shoulder to shoulder in the mud on battlefields.

He’d never had a meeting in a diner.

To be honest, he’d never been to a diner before either.

While Dex’s was not quite as famous as 79’s, Colt had heard of it. He’d heard all about how vode we welcome, how they could choose what they ate, how they were welcome to sit with their brothers or any of their nat-born friends.

Colt had never thought they were lying about those things, but it was different to experience it. Different to be welcomed in with Cody and take a seat at the edge of the room, and be handed an arms’ length of choices.

The only times in his life Colt had been presented with so many choices was staffing duty rosters.

“Take your time,” the server, a cheerful droid chirped. “This guy comes around often enough to be an expert.” She winked at Cody, if droids winked. 

Colt had expected a pot of kaff and a quiet meeting room in the Ghost barracks, and it had started out like that. There had been protocol changes, and handbook updates, and all manner of boring but useful discussion.

But Colt wasn’t a fool. All of those issues could have been settled around a holotable. So, when Cody suggested they take a walk and get some food, Colt had assumed they’d find a quiet corner of the mess. He hadn’t expected to be led out of the barracks and into a speeder. Hadn’t expected the blur of light and noise of a big city that wasn’t bombed out. Hadn’t expected a small diner with brightly glowing windows and barely any customers. He most certainly hadn’t expected to be welcomed in.

The surprises weren’t bad ones. There were so many things Colt had never done or seen, he would have welcomed them, but in the half a tenday he’d spent on Coruscant, there had been an exhausting number of surprises. It was like being a shiny all over again, and Colt didn’t like it.

“They have a Trooper Special if you don’t want to read through.” Cody looked relaxed, one arm draped over the back of the booth, lounging. But he only looked it. The Marshal Commander hadn’t picked an out of the way diner because he liked the nerf steak. The veneer of relaxed was thinner than his armor paint.

“You have another appointment?” Colt gave Cody a hint of a smile because he knew it wasn’t true. “Or you’re in a rush to tell me why we’re here?”

That drew a frown from his dinner companion. But not a denial.

Colt liked Cody. Liked him more than a lot of his vode, respected him entirely. But, Colt didn’t go for the run around. If there was something to be said, questions to be asked or answered, he’d rather lay it out on the table. Sure, Colt was private, and maybe a little defensive like Gree teased him, but he was honest with his brothers and expected the same in return.

This wasn’t about the GAR because Cody had taken it out into the city. That left very few topics to be discussed that required this level of privacy. 

“Talk to me, Cody.” If it was about his men, or his Edee brothers, or even the cadets, the sooner Colt knew, the sooner he could help. It if was about Shaak, or about involvements with Jedi, Colt would rather just hear it.

“It’s nothing bad.” Cody probably meant to be reassuring, but the grim line of his mouth wasn’t helping.

“Ready already, sweeties?” the droid asked as she zipped over, and wheeled to a stop.

Colt wasn’t, and he was torn between trying to choose something for himself just to prove he could and getting on with whatever serious discussion Cody had planned.

“Trooper Special for me.” Cody interrupted the charming smile he was giving the server to glance over to Colt with a question.

“Same, thank you.” Colt might be hungry, but he’d eaten plenty of things that barely qualified as food.

“You boys are always so polite.” She spun with a little extra flourish and wheeled off towards the kitchen.

“I’d like you to hear me out,” Cody started, dropping all pretense of lounging. “And whatever you decide, I would appreciate it if you kept it to yourself for now.”

Colt breathed the moment before answering. “Who’s asking me that?”

There were a lot of answers to that question. There were for any of them really. Cody was Marshal Commander, Commander of the 212th, a Shebse, a vod. Every one of those sides of him was owed something different from Colt. But Colt had his share of loyalties that bound him, too.

“Kote.”

That was not what Colt had expected. He inclined his head. “Tell me.”

“We’re leaving.” 

The words hit like a fist to the chest, like a physical blow, and left him stunned. “When? Who?”

Kote looked down at the tabletop, his expression thoughtful. Determined. Decided.

Colt felt something like hope in his blood, but it rushed with the electric zing of adrenaline. 

The plan was outlined carefully, slowly and in detail, like Kote knew just how difficult this was for Colt to wrap his mind around. Like he had done this before, done it again and again, and anticipated the questions and reservations. At some point, food arrived. Plates were pushed to the side so the discussion could continue. 

Colt could only imagine how long he’d spent talking it through with his Shebse to reach this moment. How much longer than that he’d held this plan in his heart to nurture it.

All the vode, all at once, would pick up their arms and leave. Go home.

Home. To a planet Colt had never seen. With brothers he’d never served beside. To live things he’d never experienced before. Peace. Freedom. Home.

“Can I count on Rancor?” That was the question that was always going to come to. The question Colt couldn’t quite seem to brace himself for when it was asked.

The sincerity alone would have tempted him. His men deserved a home, deserved to know peace. But that was what Colt knew his men deserved. 

Colt also knew the men of Rancor. He knew the men of Rancor who would push away any comfort to offer it to the next brother in his place, the ones who were lining up to offer their spots on Kamino to brothers who needed it more.

Colt wished he could give his men the rest they deserved, but he knew they would never forgive him for it.

“No. Rancor will not pledge.” 

There was no doubt in his words. He owed the cadets every protection, however insufficient it was. Cody frowned, but he didn’t argue. Maybe Rancor were not the only brothers to decline the offer.

“Rancor stays with the cadets, with the brothers who aren’t yet.” There was no other answer to be given. “Unless every single one of them came with us, unless another brother could not be made on Kamino, I cannot pledge my men.”

If there was disappointment, Cody didn’t show it. “I understand.”

He said it like he did understand. Their would-be-’alor fell silent, and Colt breathed for the first time in what felt like hours.

The risk would be enormous. 

Colt stared sightlessly at his hands on the table. 

The chance of failure would lessen the more men pledged, but it was a bold plan. 

Colt respected it. Colt admired it. He was not free to join it.

“And if Rancor brought them all?”

Colt’s head snapped up. “You’re talking millions.”

“Yes.” That same implacable calm was more reassuring than all the enthusiasm in the Galaxy. “I am.”

Something started singing in Colt’s blood. That part of him that had been built for battle, to fight and protect. It sang through that part of Colt that had been tested again and again, honed to sharp teeth and wicked edges. 

“There are more vode on Kamino, cadets and tubes, than vode currently serving the GAR.” 

And yet, Colt wasn’t actually arguing they  _ couldn’t  _ do it. 

“It would take days to mobilize that many, dozens of venators to carry them.” 

And yet, Colt’s mind was already at work, counting out Rancor men per cadet units, the draw of the tanks on a ship’s support system. 

“It would take…”

“An army?” Kote smiled from across the table. Victory laying on the table between them “What a coincidence.”

“You already have a plan?” Colt had accepted it could be done. He had long accepted it should be done. 

“No.” Kote’s smile grew. “I was hoping I’d have you for that. I’d have Rancor for that.”

“Karking Shebse.” Colt grinned back before he could drag it back. 

There was a risk. The risk of discovery, the risk of failure, but Colt had lived with the other risks for too long. Any plan that would end the helplessness of watching cadets threatened and endangered, that would offer a glimmer of hope that the littlest brothers in tubes would not be forced into a never-ending march to war, even one that only offered the belief that they could be more than their design… that plan would be worth pursuing. 

“Count us in, Vod’alor.”

The smile across the table transformed into a baring of teeth, a warrior tasting victory. “Colt of Rancor, Vode seek your pledge.”

Cody and Colt were in a grimy Coruscant diner planning sedition. 

Kote, of the Vode, asked Colt’s pledge, to his brothers over his owners. Colt bared his own teeth in reply. He would have it. 

It was where Colt’s loyalty had always been.

So he pledged. Arms and armor. Mando’a and battlesign. Defense and education. Brothers and children, Aliit and Vod’alor.

The words were too heavy, too significant for his chest, and yet every single word he spoke lifted the weight bearing down on Colt’s shoulders for so long he’d forgotten what it was like not to carry it.

What they were about to do was too large to imagine, to consider, and yet it was the only path ahead. 

“I accept Rancor, and the vode of Kamino, into my care. I call you brother and clan. Your battles are mine and my victories are yours.”

Kote leaned forward and Colt pressed his forehead into his. They would be together in this.

They had always been brothers, despite the best efforts of their makers, of their trainers. They had always been the only ones they could count on, but hearing these words shaped that brotherhood into something new, something that could be wielded in power.

In victory. 

There would be true victory one day.

“Does he know?” Colt asked when he had gathered his emotions and packed them carefully away for later examination.

Cody nodded. “He does. He’s known since I started my work.”

Of course. Colt dragged the plate of forgotten food back in front of him. The grease had congealed, as well as some of the sauce. Even cold, Colt had eaten worse, he was sure.

“Will you tell her?” Cody was focused on his own plate, on giving Colt time to answer.

He had never hidden anything from Shaak. He’d always promised his mind was open to her. And yet, his brothers came first. She knew that. Understood that. 

The only difference was how much higher the stakes had become.

“Eventually.” Colt wished it was tonight, this moment. He wished she was beside him in the booth. “When we’re ready. When it has to happen.” That was too far away for comfort, but the right choice. “She has… She promised when there was a better way, she’d help us take it.”

Cody considered that. “I hope she will.” 

Colt would bet his life on his Jedi, but he would not bet the life of millions of his brothers on the authenticity of the word of the Kaminisii. “I know she will.” 

“Oya, vod.” Cody gave him a pure, Shebse, osik-stirring grin.

Colt couldn’t help but agree. “Oya.” 

And even cold, the food was delicious.

**Author's Note:**

> We all knew this day would come - I have finally run out of buffer. Let's see if I can keep up the posting schedule. Oya!


End file.
